Story - The Meade County Messenger


Vol. 117, No. 41	October 14 , 2009

“A hero comes home to rest ”

By ROBYN GREGORY
Messenger Staff

A grim procession wound its way down Broadway–Staff Sgt. Edward Bernard Smith’s final journey made in a hearse.
Following a service at Fort Knox’s Prichard Chapel, he was buried at Zion Grove Cemetery Sept. 9. Smith is one of three soldiers the Meade County community has lost since the “Global War on Terror” began.

He leaves behind wife Jamie Welch Smith of Ekron, and two children; DeAnndrea Luney and Deiontay Welch.

Smith was assigned to the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry’s 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team attached to the 2nd Infantry Division.

The Fort Lewis unit was deployed to Afghanistan this summer as part of President Barrack Obama’s 21,000 troop buildup.

On Sept. 24, Fort Lewis was paying its respects to two other Stryker soldiers killed in action, while the nation was marking the eighth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan.

Near the tiny village of Omar Zai, Smith’s Stryker team were about 45 minutes into a 15-hour mission. They planned to patrol on foot, stopping to talk to village elders. When night came, they planned to watch for Taliban activity.

A 600-pound bomb shattered their vehicle.

Smith, Sgt. Titus Reynolds, and Spc. Joseph White were killed by the Improvised Explosive Device. (IED). PFC Nathaniel Ollis survived with two shattered feet, while another soldier’s leg required amputation later.

“There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary before we got hit,” described Ollis. “We were just driving and it went off. The floor ripped in two.”

According to the Florida Sun Sentinel News, Smith weighed just two pouunds at birth. When he was finally brought home from the hospital he was still so small he could fit in a shoebox.

“He was no longer than my forearm,” described his grandmother, Annette Parrish, who raised him
Smith enlisted in 2002, and served sixteen months in Iraq before reenlisting, and beginning his final tour in Afghanistan.

“He loved the military. He was gung-ho,” described his grandfather Edward Parrish, 75.
He was one of eight children born to Sophia Smith Carter, who died of kidney failure in 1997 at the age of 32.

Aunt Yalunda Evans described Smith:

“He came home from Iraq more mature, not as playful as he was. He saw so much,” she said. “He loved his family and really appreciated what family meant. He was the one who always pulled the family together.”

His father, grandparents, wife and stepchildren, and a large contingent of Florida and Georgia relatives bid Smith farewell on a rainy afternoon at Zion Grove Cemetery, complete with full military honors.

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